Ode To Alabama

How Gosdin, Cochran Wrote A Tribute To `Heart Of Dixie`

NASHVILLE — Most of the songs on Vern Gosdin`s new LP, ``Alone,`` were written about a recent marital breakup, but one-``Take Me Home to Alabama``-was written

``for a little different reason,`` Gosdin recalls.

Noting that long-prominent songwriter Hank Cochran often comes out on the road to co-write with him, the Alabama native goes on to say he and Cochran and some other songwriters were sitting around a motel room when Gosdin announced they were going to write a song about Alabama.

``About a month prior to this,`` he explains, ``somebody had told me they were going to have a state of Alabama homecoming, and I thought, `I`ll just write me a song.`

``So I remember us sitting in this motel room in Myrtle Beach (S.C.), and I was telling them about this homecoming they were going to have. Then we talked for a while about what`s in Alabama; they`ve got cotton, they`ve got white beaches, they got a missile base in Huntsville, and their slogans are

`Heart of Dixie` and `Alabama the Beautiful.`

``We just talked about all this stuff and then sat there and wrote us an Alabama song.``

On the record: The new Kathy Mattea single, ``Burnin` Old Memories,`` was debuted by Mattea in an appearance on CBS-TV`s ``Pat Sajak Show.`` Cowritten by Larry Boone and a writer of Mattea`s award-winning ``18 Wheels and a Dozen Roses,`` Paul Nelson, the new single follows ``Come From the Heart,`` which had the distinction of hitting the country charts` No. 1 spot the week of Mattea`s birthday, June 21. . . . With her ``Honky Tonk Angel`` album now well up in the Top 20, Patty Loveless has been in the recording studio with producer Tony Brown working on her next LP. She also has cut 30-second and 60- second radio spots for a corporate sponsor of some of her shows, Justin Boots. . . . Song Title of the Week: ``Too Much Month at the End of the Money`` by J.S. Sherrill, D. Robbins, B. DiPiero.

RCA-Nashville boss Joe Galante says the title song of Keith Whitley`s new, posthumous LP, ``I Wonder Do You Think of Me,`` was what Whitley came up with when Galante challenged him to ``find another song . . . with the same integrity`` as ``I Never Go Around Mirrors`` from his previous album.

Galante explains that ``I Never Go Around Mirrors`` was one of Whitley`s favorite songs from the ``Don`t Close Your Eyes`` album and that Whitley wanted to release it as a single, but Galante, ``even though I agreed with him that it was a great song . . . never felt the climate was right at radio for it.``

Galante adds that after ``I Wonder Do You Think of Me`` was cut, Whitley

``felt it was his best work.`` Thus, Galante concludes, it became both the album`s title song and its initial single.

On the Road: Arriving in Reno two hours behind schedule in a hailstorm, K.T. Oslin was rushed by limo to a local radio show, where she proceeded to note to the show`s host, ``When I hit a town, all `hail` breaks loose.`` It apparently did in more ways than one. Performing two shows a night at Harrah`s Club in Reno, Oslin reportedly drew such crowds that an estimated hundred patrons per show were turned away. . . . Dolly Parton recently sold out the 2,500 seats of the Riverside Theater in Milwaukee, grossing more than $65,000. . . . Willie Nelson and George Jones recently managed to draw only about 2,000 people to the 6,000-seat Deer Creek Amphitheater in Indianapolis. They grossed some $30,000.

The recent Gary Morris/Continental Airlines Benefit Concert and Celebrity Golf Classic in Denver netted more than $45,000 for the American Cancer Society. The concert, which drew a packed house to the John Q. Hammond Trade Center, was hosted by Morris.

Et cetera: Five performing acts and five businessmen have been nominated for 1989 induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. The performers are Tennessee Ernie Ford, the Jordanaires, the Louvin Brothers, George Morgan and Hank Thompson, while the businessmen are longtime Columbia Records producer Don Law, longtime Capitol Records producer Ken Nelson, longtime radio executive and music publisher Jack Stapp, longtime TV music director Cliffie Stone and longtime radio and TV executive Irving Waugh. One person or act from each category will be named to the elite aggregation at the annual Country Music Association Awards Show Oct. 9. . . . 1989 nominees for the CMA`s country broadcast personality of the year awards are: